Rubber consumption, global natural

Global natural rubber consumption is split among tires (75%), automotive mechanical products (5%), nonautomotive mechanical products (10%), and miscellaneous applications such as medical and health-related products (10%). Since the 1960s, the quality and consistency of natural rubber has improved, primarily because of the implementation of standard specifications defining a range of grades of rubber. Natural rubber is available in three basic types technically specified rubbers, visually inspected rubbers, and specialty rubbers. 

World rubber usage of around 25.8 million metric tons is split between natural rubber, which constitutes about 43% of global consumption, and synthetic rubber, of which styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) accounts for 21%. The balance of synthetic rubbers (36%) consists of polybutadiene rubber (BR) and a range of specialty polymers such as polyurethanes, halogenated polymers, silicones, and acrylates. Traditionally, the growth of synthetic and natural rubber consumption is virtually in line with the change in gross domestic product of, collectively. North America, Europe, Japan, China, and India. 

About 70% of natural rubber consumption goes into tire production while the remaining 30% is used by the nontire sector. There is some substitutability of various synthetic elastomers for natural rubber, but it is rather limited. This substitutability is restricted for the tire sector, which globally uses almost half of its total rubber requirement as natural rubber. In the short term, it is technically very difHcult to make major substitutions of synthetic rubber for NR use. Some applications are very critical, such as the use of NR in wire adhesion compounds for the production of steel-belted radial tires. Also, the use of natural rubber is very critical in the production of very large off-the-road tires. However, the natural rubber requirements of the nontire sector were only 29% of its total rubber usage in the year 2000. The nontire sector only used about 22% of its total rubber requirement as natural rubber in 2010. Many times it is easier in the nontire sector to substitute specialty syn-... 

In the 1970s there was no argument that, in tonnage terms, SBR was the world s most important rubber. At that time about half of the total global consumption of rubber of about 8 X 10 tonnes per annum was accounted for by SBR. Today natural rubber has about half the market, which has now grown to about 11 X 10 tonnes, and the share of SBR has fallen to about 24%. Nevertheless SBR remains a material of great importance. 

Global production and consumption of natural rubber have been growing, although not steadily, during the past decade, as is seen from Table 14.4 [20,21]. The variation in annual growth rate in production is mostly contributed by price and agro-climatic conditions. The growth in consumption also has had its influence on production as is evident from the above table. 

Table 14.4 Global production and consumption of natural rubber during 2000-10.

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